We are not in Cold War any more, says Merkel as spy row grows

The scandal reignited the row over the hacking of Angela Merkel’s phone by the NSA (Julian Stratenschulte)

IT WAS an incident right out of a John le Carré novel — but with an unexpected modern twist.

Last Tuesday John Brennan, the director of the CIA, took a call at his seventh-floor office in the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, from Klaus-Dieter Fritsche, Germany’s secret services co-ordinator in Berlin.

The German spymaster was exasperated — but his anger was directed at an ally rather than an old Cold War foe.

Fritsche made a formal complaint to Brennan that an officer working for the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, had supplied the CIA with 218 secret documents in exchange for payment.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, expected assurances that the case would be investigated, such conduct would cease and an apology would be…